Literary The MobileRead Literary Book Club June 2011 Vote

[caleb72]

The Master and Margarita looks quite interesting - mainly because I've been meaning to test whether I have a thing for Russian literature and when the opportunity last came up with Tolstoy, I abstained due to the size.

This one looks like a more palatable dose for me.

[toomanybooks]

I was at the UCSC library today and picked up three books of literary criticism about Master and Margarita and Bulgakov. However the vote goes I would be happy to share anything interesting that I learn from them if people want me to.

Regarding the translation, I would recommend the Pevear and Volohnsky translation.

[Latinandgreek]

Originally Posted by toomanybooks

I was at the UCSC library today and picked up three books of literary criticism about Master and Margarita and Bulgakov. However the vote goes I would be happy to share anything interesting that I learn from them if people want me to.

Regarding the translation, I would recommend the Pevear and Volohnsky translation.

Thanks for your advice. Please, do share anything interesting that you come across.

[caleb72]

Originally Posted by toomanybooks

Regarding the translation, I would recommend the Pevear and Volohnsky translation.

Cool - that seems to be the only decent translation available to me in Amazon. There is one other version but the translator is not mentioned and there are some pretty strong recommendations against reading it - eg bad OCR errors etc..

[beppe]

Originally Posted by toomanybooks

I was at the UCSC library today and picked up three books of literary criticism about Master and Margarita and Bulgakov. However the vote goes I would be happy to share anything interesting that I learn from them if people want me to.

Regarding the translation, I would recommend the Pevear and Volohnsky translation.

I would be happy to share anything interesting ...
I would recommend the Pevear and Volohnsky translation....

Two reasons to find your post useful

I have il Maestro e la Margherita as a pbook. Amazon carries it as ebook.
I will most probably read it on my readers.

I have a tough decision to make. In which language to read it. Reading it in Italian would put me only one step from the original (Russian->Italian), while reading it in English will require two steps (Russian->English->Italian), with the last step probably just nominal as I can address my self in English also.

The problem reverses if I consider the discussion of the book, that will be in English. The last step Italian->English would be certainly steeper, and quoting would have to be more symbolic.

Hum... Better in English altogether, unless I can convince my internal financial controller to let me buy both ... Hum

[Ea]

Originally Posted by beppe

I have a tough decision to make. In which language to read it. Reading it in Italian would put me only one step from the original (Russian->Italian), while reading it in English will require two steps (Russian->English->Italian), with the last step probably just nominal as I can address my self in English also.

The problem reverses if I consider the discussion of the book, that will be in English. The last step Italian->English would be certainly steeper, and quoting would have to be more symbolic.

I have the same challenge. Except of course it's Danish vs. an English translation. In English I can read it on the kindle and it will be easier to work with notes and quotes. In Danish there's one less step of translation. I'll have to find out whether the Danish translation is any good before even considering it.

[beppe]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

....
As far as On the Beach (which I did read a long time ago) my opinion is that it is dated and of pulp fiction quality.
....

Yeah, pulp fiction. I had to go there and see what the expression actually means. Clockwork Orange could go there also.

IMMO, Nevil Shute might have reached his peak with No Highway.

from Wikipedia

Spoiler:

The novel contains many of the ingredients that made Shute popular as a novelist, and, like several other of Shute's later novels, includes an element of the supernatural.
...
Shute's fictional account of a new airliner design being subject to mechanical failure due to metal fatigue after a certain number of flight cycles presaged the similar failures of the de Havilland Comet airliner just six years later. There are many parallels between the novel and the later real-life disasters, surely the result of one aeronautical engineer/author working out the possibilities, which a real and similar design then experienced. (A coincidence has been observed between the aircraft names, the fictional Reindeer and the real-life Comet, "Comet" being in poetry the name of one of Santa Claus's reindeer, but the Comet was named for the prewar de Havilland DH.88 racing aircraft.)

[caleb72]

Originally Posted by beppe

Yeah, pulp fiction. I had to go there and see what the expression actually means. Clockwork Orange could go there also.

I always got the impression that Ray Bradbury has somehow earned that lofty "literature" title. But there he is next to Lovecraft and Hammett.

Oh well - maybe I'll forever be lowbrow. I can live with that.

[obs20]

Those of us needing epub could save a dollar on Master and the Margarita by using this code at checkout: may27us1 when buying from Kobo until May 30.

[DiapDealer]

I'm not sure what the exact copyright status of Master and Margarita is, but Wikipedia has a link to a website that has the full text of the 1967 Michael Glenny translation as well as the 1997 Pevear AND Volokhonsky translation. There's also several sites that have a pdf of the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation which claim it is released under the Creative Commons license.

Make of it what you will.

[CharlieBird]

How do you edit a post to delete it?

[CharlieBird]

Originally Posted by Ea

I'm going to read The Master and Margarita in any case. If it doesn't win and we are enough people interested, we can have a separate discussion. The Anthony Powell book looks good too, though.

Originally Posted by beppe

Ditto

Change 'read' to re-read... Double Ditto.

I'm also motivated to start A Question of Upbringing, which has been languishing in my library for over a year now.
d

[orlok]

Originally Posted by CharlieBird

How do you edit a post to delete it?

You can't. Just edit it and put *deleted* or similar. Or you can ask a moderator to remove, but it's not necessary.

[fantasyfan]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I'm not sure what the exact copyright status of Master and Margarita is, but Wikipedia has a link to a website that has the full text of the 1967 Michael Glenny translation as well as the 1997 Pevear AND Volokhonsky translation. There's also several sites that have a pdf of the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation which claim it is released under the Creative Commons license.

Make of it what you will.

Thank you for your efforts to locate a text.

I found the Wikipedia link but that text looks like it would be very unpleasant to read. The Pevear and Volokhonsky translation in PDF looks better on the screen and claims to be--as you say--in the public domain. But it, too, would be a strain on the eyes as well as being difficult to navigate. Personally, I don't think I would like to read and study an extended and complex text under those conditions--interesting as the novel undoubtedly is.

The Kindle version would be ideal but is expensive.

These are just my own thoughts. Others, of course, may feel very differently.

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I'm not sure what the exact copyright status of Master and Margarita is, but Wikipedia has a link to a website that has the full text of the 1967 Michael Glenny translation as well as the 1997 Pevear AND Volokhonsky translation. There's also several sites that have a pdf of the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation which claim it is released under the Creative Commons license.

Make of it what you will.

I would *highly* suspect that the 1997 translation is still under copyright no matter the claim of Creative Commons. The same website has the complete "Hitchhikers Guide" available in PDF also, and I'm *pretty sure* that is still under copyright. Though the author died in 1940, the book was not published for the first time until 1966 and the first English translation later in the 1960's. I've been searching for a legal free copy and all I can find are the questionable and the pirates.